The present invention relates to an apparatus which uses an animation for the sign language to transmit information and specifically to an apparatus for editing animation data for the sign language.
The technique for moving a model of the human body on the computer graphics (CG) from time series data representative of movement of the sign language when the sign language is expressed by the animation on the computer graphics as measures for offering information to an aurally handicapped person is known in "Study in a Method of Producing Animation for the Sign Language using Time Series Data" by Sakiyama et al. in collected papers of the 20-th Meeting of the Japan Sign Language Society.
Heretofore, when the animation for the sign language is edited, time series data for preparing the animation are prepared in a unit of sign language sentence or in a unit of sign language word constituting the sign language sentence and the time series data are combined to produce the animation.
In the former case, re-utilization of the animation data is difficult and accordingly it is uneconomical. Further, in the latter case, re-utilization of the time series data is increased, while it is difficult to add information such as expression and gesture between the sign language words in the sign language sentence.
Furthermore, when the time series data are prepared or when the time series data for the sign language sentence are edited, parameters representative of position, direction and shape of the fingers are modified by directly rewriting values thereof and there is no interface for facilitating such works.
As described above, the technique for effectively preparing the time series data for producing the animation on the computer graphics is not realized yet.
First of all, when the animation data for the sign language are prepared on the basis of data inputted from a glove-type sensor (for example, DATA GLOVE of VPL Research Inc.), the animation data sometimes contain noise which is an obstacle when the data is read as the sign language.
Further, as "red" and "white" of the sign language words, there is a case where whether a mouth pointed by the finger is closed or opened signifies a different sign language word.
Furthermore, as a strange expression made in the interrogative sentence, it is difficult to describe readable or understandable animation data for the sign language from only movement of the fingers inputted from the glove-type sensor.
In addition, there are many sign language words each composed of a combination of several movements of the fingers. It is inefficient to the memory capacity that data for the finger movements are registered individually in respect to the sign language words using the same finger movements and the consistency to correction of the finger movement is also not ensured.
Second, the finger movement data inputted using the glove-type sensor often contain error and correction thereof is required after inputting of the data. At this time, it is inefficient that a numerical value is assigned individually to each frame constituting the time series data to correct it and it is a bottleneck in preparing the animation.
Further, in order to prepare the sign language animation easy to understand, it is also necessary to be able to add information other than the finger movement easily in the same manner as the editing work of the finger movement.
Third, when the whole sign language sentence is expressed in the same rhythm as in expression of the word in the case where the sign language word data are combined to prepare the animation of the sign language sentence, the animation is very difficult to understand. In the actual sign language expression, pauses having different lengths are inserted between words to thereby intonate the actual sign language expression.
Further, the sign language is featured so that the position in which the finger movement is expressed is varied to distinguish persons connected. In order to attain this expression, it is necessary to change the position of the finger movement for the previously registered sign language word data in accordance with the context.